Its been a few days since my last entry and this is due to rushing around working on the garden, sorting out things on my to do list and generally getting ready for Easter.
Now finished putting in the gate in the garden so we can restrict LCJ movements and ensure that we can stop him quickly getting onto the drive and potentially the road. The skip was finally collected on Saturday morning whilst CJ was getting her cut and LCJ was asleep, I bet he would have loved to see the big skip lorry 
It is nice having the drive back, but wondering if I will ever get around to sorting out the drive and parking.
Gate
I managed to replace the light fitting on the landing with the one we purchase about a year ago
On Monday collected a boot full of gravel ready for the path once the edging arrives, will do the same again on Wednesday which hopefully will be the last lots
Went to Birdworld today (www.birdworld.co.uk) and as Easter school holidays had already started the place was mobbed with families everywhere. I seem to be the only person there that didn’t have any kids, I bet all the parents were think strange time to visit
I took my camera plus CJs next LX3 to take some pictures, but limited opportunities to get many decent pictures due to the cages, but still managed a few. I thought that cost was a little higher than I expected but the cost included the Farm and the Underwater World areas so not too bad. I managed to get some shots of the penguins and flamingos plus the ducks etc. I took some shots in the underwater world area with the LX3 and some of these were not too bad considering the state of the glass and the lack of light. Overall the pictures were not too bad and I was pleased with some of the long range zoom shoots of the birds with the EOS40D Canon DSLR mated with the Canon L 100-400 lens. Here are some examples will post more on FB.
Flamingo Birdworld
Duck
Today I was feeling less horse and a bit more in the land of the living. Popped out this morning to go and grab some gravel , concrete, gate and posts after dropping off the compactor at the hire shop.
Is it wrong when the women in Homebase asks were you in the other day buying gravel :-0 thats what happens when you go the DIY store too early in the morning. So eight bags of gravel and two buckets later I was off to Wickes. In Wickes it was a simple task some concrete, a gate, furniture and home. Managed to get all apart from the all important posts and post holders so gate is about as much use as a chocolate teapot. Home to drop off the boot full before grabbing a coffee and off to find posts.
Posts secured in Long Acres after much deliberation on whether to get spikes or concrete-in posts, opted for concrete-in one as not sure what is under the surface in terms of services. Dug the holes before lunch and the supports set in concrete in the afternoon ready for the posts to be added once the concrete has set.
After much hunting I have found some edging that should be available in a week or two so this will be just in time for Easter. I gave up on the original cheap edging as it was nasty and had very sharp burrs that would need smoothing to reduce the slashing risk. We did find a nice looking one from Bradstone but this proved a little difficult to get in quickly so opted for one by Global Stone that is a compromise with the original Bradstone and did work out cheaper including delivery to home
Sandstone edging (image courtesy of Global Stone)
We are going for the edging as this will separate the gravel path from the flower bed and grass areas. As there is a delay to the edging I will have to switch to getting the gate installed, but first to purchase a suitable one so a job for tomorrow I think
Sore throat today has been a pain in the backside but at least I got to use the compactor plate on the path area to give me a firm sub base to lay the gravel once the edging is installed. I think tomorrow will be also spent getting more gravel and tidying up the wall and cement the manhole cover frame in place.
Today spent some time in Starbucks catching up on emails and tweets before heading to the dry cleaners to pick up CJs jacket and then off to Staines to pick up a hoover and some dummies. I would have also been loading iLife on Tressies iMac in an attempt to fix the file associations of Movies with QT, but running Tiger and only had the 09 version with me, will have to try the earlier version.
After hoover and iLife attempt I popped into to Slough to see if B&Q had the edging stones I needed for the garden. No edging stones available of the type I was after so back to square one. Back home to continue with the earth clearing so I can get rid of the skip before the weekend. Made good progress and the skip is about done now.
The blueray player was delivered today and I now have installed it bit waiting to test it with the plasma. I opted for the Sony BDPS 550 which provides BD Live, DTS decode, Profile 2.0, 7.1 sound etc. Once I have tested I will write some more information and comments.
